Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Ron DeSantis, the grand wizard, oops, governor of FL.

The new republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

Donald Trump, welcome to your everything, everywhere, all at once.

…and a burning sense of injustice to juice the soul.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

I was promised a recession.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

In short, I come down firmly on all sides of the issue.

When we show up, we win.

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

Second rate reporter says what?

How can republicans represent us when they don’t trust women?

In after Baud. Damn.

You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 / COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: March 13, 2024

COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: March 13, 2024

by | 74 Comments

This post is in: ,

For better or worse, I’m finding less and less information to aggregate, as endemic Covid-19 becomes just another cost of doing business…

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Good news, if true:

Historical pandemic revision is already well under way. Britain:

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[Gift link]

Minor blessing: As vaccines emerge for endemic diseases like malaria, the pandemic has left a legacy of manufacturing facilities to produce them…

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World’s best healthcare, if you can afford it…

… A recent JAMA Network study found that sick people 85 and older were less likely than younger Medicare patients to get COVID therapies like Paxlovid. The drug might have prevented up to 27,000 deaths in 2022 if it had been allocated based on which patients were at highest risk from COVID-19. Nursing home patients, who account for around one in six U.S. COVID-19 deaths, were about two-thirds as likely as other older adults to get the drug.

Shrunken confidence in government health programs is one reason the drug isn’t reaching those who need it. In senior living facilities, “a lack of clear information and misinformation” are “causing residents and their families to be reluctant to take the necessary steps to reduce COVID risks,” said Dr. David Gifford, chief medical officer for an association representing 14,000 health care providers, many in senior care…

“Proactive and health-literate people get the drug. Those who are receiving information more passively have no idea whether it’s important or harmful,” said Dr. Michael Barnett, a primary care physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and an associate professor at Harvard, who led the JAMA Network study.

In fact, the drug is still free for those who are uninsured or enrolled in Medicare, Medicaid, or other federal health programs, including those for veterans…

Pfizer sold the U.S. government 23.7 million five-day courses of Paxlovid, produced under an FDA emergency authorization, in 2021 and 2022, at a price of around $530 each.

Under the new agreement, Pfizer commits to provide the drug for the beneficiaries of the government insurance programs. Meanwhile, Pfizer bills insurers for some portion of the $1,390 list price. Some patients say pharmacies have quoted them prices of $1,600 or more.

How exactly Pfizer arrived at that price isn’t clear. Pfizer won’t say. A Harvard study last year estimated the cost of producing generic Paxlovid at about $15 per treatment course, including manufacturing expenses, a 10% profit markup, and 27% in taxes…

The other problem is getting the drug where it is needed. “We negotiated really hard with Pfizer to make sure that Paxlovid would be available to Americans the way they were accustomed to,” Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra told reporters in February. “If you have private insurance, it should not cost you much money, certainly not more than $100.”…

Reader Interactions

74Comments

  1. 1.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Mounting research shows that COVID-19 leaves its mark on the brain, including with significant drops in IQ scores.

    I’m beginning to see how the GOP lost it’s mind.

  5. 5.

    YY_Sima Qian

    The Spring Festival travel season has unsurprisingly caused a new wave of infection in the PRC. Few people among my circle of family, friends, colleagues & acquaintances have caught it though. One of my wife’s uncles, & his spouse, are among the exceptions. They somehow had managed to avoid infection through the exit tsunami at the end of ’22 & beginning of ’23, or the subsequent waves since, so this is their 1st go around.

    There is no more effort at vaccination in the PRC, any more, even for the elderly vulnerable population. OTOH, there has not been reports of hospitals getting busy through the waves in ’23, either.

  7. 7.

    rekoob

    Thank you, Anne Laurie. These anniversaries are opportunities to reflect on risk awareness, management, and mitigation. May we do better next time.

  8. 8.

    YY_Sima Qian

    The PRC did learn a lot of lessons from the original outbreak, & implemented a lot of reforms. Some failed to stick, such as regulation of the wet markets & the farming of the “wild” animals. Some were inconsistently implemented, such as the opacity & obfuscation of the Wuhan municipal & Hubei provincial governments early on. However, enough systems & mechanisms were in place to allow the central government to response quickly enough to suppressor & seemingly eliminate the COVID-19 outbreak domestically, albeit at enormous cost.

    The experience of the original SARS, w/ its relatively low transmissivity, led the authorities to think they could afford to wait & see (a.k.a. prevarication & procrastination). It seems human beings are doomed to keep fighting the last war.

  10. 10.

    Ohio Mom

    The other day I was recounting Ohio Son’s job history to his new job developer (someone paid by the state voc rehab agency to help a disabled person identify career interests and possible employment opportunities).

    When Covid hit, Son was working as a shopper at Whole Foods, a job he found all by himself and was enjoying. A set of accomplishments not too many of his peers can claim.

    After a few weeks of the pandemic, as the virus began to arrive in Cincinnati, and the reality of Covid sank in, we had him quit; as I told the job developer, Ohio Dad and I are both in high risk categories and “we were afraid he’d kill us.”

    Now obviously, I believe in Covid (had it twice) and continue to believe we made the right call in having Son give up working in a crowded supermarket. Masks weren’t even a thing yet.

    And still, listening to myself tell the story, it felt preposterous to me that we were in such a panic. Almost embarrassing to admit.

    Against all my knowledge and intrapersonal insight, I have developed a slight case of Covid denialism. All I can I can say is I see why people erased the Spanish Flu pandemic from their memories.

    There is something like cognitive dissonance at work, and maybe a dash of superstition. I hope some psychologists are studying this. It’s not good for us to have such mass denial.

  11. 11.

    New Deal democrat

    There won’t be a variant update until Friday. The last one, from 12 days ago, showed JN.1 responsible for over 97% of all new cases.

    Good news from both Biobot and CDC wastewater monitoring. The former shows particles down almost 60% from their Holiday peak, while the latter shows them down almost 70%. Biobot shows levels a little higher than 12 months ago; the CDC a little lower.

    Hospitalizations for the week of March 2 were 15,100, down 40% from their Holiday peak, vs. 6,300 at last summer’s nadir. In the entire first 3 years of COVID, hospitalizations were lower only during June 2021 and March and April 2022. Last year hospitalizations did not get this low until the first week of April. Since last autumn hospitalizations have averaged about 2/3’s of their previous year’s number. If that trend continues, our low this summer will be about 4,200 per week.

    The story with deaths is similar. Deaths as of the week of February 10 were 1,480, down down over 40% from their Holiday peak of just over 2,500, vs. their low last summer of 489. In the entire first 3 years of the pandemic, deaths were only lower for 4 weeks in April and May 2022. Last year deaths did not get this low until the first week of April. Since last autumn deaths have also averaged about 2/3’s of their previous year’s number. If that trend holds, by this summer deaths will be down to about 320 per week.

    Since deaths for the past 52 weeks have been about 65,000, if the 2023-24 COVID cycle continues at this rate of trend decline, there will “only” be about 44,000 deaths – truly a flu-like number.

    One final note. From Eric Topol, the red vs. blue disparity in deaths has continued to increase:
     https://www.threads.net/@erictopol1/post/C4aumgXr1Vy

    One possible confounding variable is that population in Trump voting counties tends to be older, which of course increases COVID mortality as well.

  12. 12.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Ohio Mom: And still, listening to myself tell the story, it felt preposterous to me that we were in such a panic. Almost embarrassing to admit.

    A lack of knowledge is a void waiting to be filled with our worst fears. It’s a very human thing.

  13. 13.

    NorthLeft

    I hate to say it, but Deadbeat Donald is turning out to be right. Although I sincerely doubt that he meant that COVID would disappear by it being memory holed exactly like it is now.

    Thanks Anne for your tremendous work on this informative and (hate to say it) “entertaining” feature. I have not missed one of these posts (even while camping in the wilderness) since you started writing them. Well done!

  14. 14.

    Cacti

    COVID took my wife’s father a month before the vaccine became available.

    I’ll never forgive the bloated orange ballsack and the red state government of where my FIL lived for the absolute hash they made of containing the spread of the disease.

  15. 15.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Ohio Mom: I had also meant to point out that we were all afflicted with a lack of knowledge in the beginning and we all felt some fear.

  16. 16.

    RepubAnon

    @OzarkHillbilly:  Covid’s effect on the brain may explain why Republicans oppose vaccination and other preventative measures. The lower your IQ, the more likely you’re MAGA.

  18. 18.

    lowtechcyclist

    The good news is that things are getting better. According to the CDC, the worst week of the 2023-2024 peak was the week of January 13, with 2,521 Covid deaths. There were 11 weeks over the 2022-2023 winter with higher Covid death tolls than that, including three weeks with more than 3,500 deaths each.

    And of course the 2022-2023 winter had been a relief compared to the 2021-2022 winter and all the peaks before then.

  20. 20.

    Van Buren

    I am close to 2 people who have had COVID 3 or more times, and they both have changed personalities. One went from being an extreme extrovert to being rather subdued in groups and the other went from being a worrier to being paranoid. Can’t be sure correlation equals causation, but I sure suspect it.

  21. 21.

    satby

    @New Deal democrat: Those graphs from Eric Topol are stunning. But I see those affects every weekday at my red state market, where a lot of the former week day patrons, mostly older retired folks, have just disappeared. Some we know passed away during the pandemic, others we know have much worse health issues confining them to home or assisted living. Without covid some of them would have passed away anyway because those were the odds, but the difference is stunning.

  22. 22.

    eclare

    @Van Buren:

    The reach that covid has over different organs and bodily systems is so scary.  Everything from the brain, the heart, the lungs, etc. are impacted.

  25. 25.

    rusty

    @Ohio Mom: There is definitely a lot of revisionism around the pandemic. That seems to account for a slice of the population thinking things really were better before the pandemic and they want that back by voting for Trump.  It’s an effort to wipe those two years away.

    I feel there is also a lingering mass PTSD like experience that is still reverberating.  Hopefully that piece is starting to subside.  I take as evidence the results of our local school and town votes yesterday.  Previous to the pandemic, the schools were well supported and the budgets were basically non-controversial.  During and after the pandemic, they suddenly became very controversial, several budgets failed and we had two failed votes to replace a decrepit elementary school.  There were also masses of people with questionable agendas running for the school board.  Yesterday everything passed with reasonable margins, including the new school (we are in New Hampshire, the state provides very little money to run the schools and absolutely nothing for school construction so it all falls on the property taxes.)  A hopeful sign that the collective madness is subsiding.

  28. 28.

    EarthWindFire

    @Ohio Mom: You did what you did out of a reasonable fear of losing yourself and your loved ones. I think the widespread denialism has made a lot of us question what were actually reasonable decisions, given what we did and didn’t know. I hope you’re able to reconcile your embarrassment. There’s no need for it.

  29. 29.

    Soprano2

    Both of our treatment plants show reductions in Covid in their latest testing. That tracks with the weather getting warmer here.

    As for Covid denialism, I have a little bit of it too. When I think back on how 2020 was, it’s hard to believe that was real. It’s like a “lost” year, because so many things we take for granted just didn’t happen. I think the Biden people should run some kind of weekly thing with “you are better off than you were four years ago” highlighting all the crazy stuff the R’s did around Covid, reminding people of what it was like. Our local symphony was one of only a few in the U.S. that had a 2020-2021 season; I expressed to them several times how grateful I was for that. I think they’re reaping the rewards now, because the past few concerts have been well-attended, pretty much back to the attendance levels they were achieving pre-Covid.

  30. 30.

    Soprano2

    @rusty: I think we all had some PTSD around Covid. We all walked around for a year knowing that any random encounter with a stranger could give us a disease that could kill us or someone we loved. People were saying goodbye to their dying loved ones over Zoom! We were unable to see family members, some people for over a year. It would be strange if we didn’t have some lingering trauma from all of that.

  31. 31.

    satby

    @rusty: a lingering mass PTSD

    I have said before I think we as a nation have PTSD, but from the entire trauma of the tfg years, which was amplified by the horror of the pandemic and that administration’s open attempt to kill its opposition in blue states and cities. But it’s from more than the pandemic.

  32. 32.

    CCL

    So after 4 years of being careful…sometimes the only person in a mask in conferences and meeting, zooms instead of in person meetings, basically isolation as much as possible, we let down our guards a little bit (still wore masks, but not all the time).

     I won’t bore everyone with all the too familiar tale… But 3 weeks ago, four days apart, we came down with what we thought were the usual spring head colds.  Thankfully we were mostly too sick to go anywhere or really get out of bed.  Finally wised up, tested.  Yup. It hit both of us really hard… Don’t want to go through that again and we are still not recovered.

    So angry at myself for letting down my guard.

    So, AL, as long as you keep doing these, I will be reading.  You kept us safe for four years, and I am not exaggerating. Just wish I had been smarter and eternally grateful we didn’t get it earlier in the pandemic.

  33. 33.

    Another Scott

    A DC work colleague was out sick last week – she got COVID for the first time.

    It’s still out there…

    Continue to be smart, everyone.  Stay safe.

    Thanks AL.  If monthly updates going forward make sense, then do that.  Don’t beat your head against the wall trying to find stuff that isn’t available for weekly updates.  :-/  Thanks very much for your efforts!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  34. 34.

    satby

    @CCL: I don’t think you should be angry at yourself. It’s endemic now and other than literally living in a bubble at some point everyone will probably get it no matter how careful they are. You were able to dodge it until it evolved to be a less serious (but more easily transmitted) virus; that’s a job well done if you ask me.

  35. 35.

    Anne Laurie

    You’re welcome, everyone! I wouldn’t keep doing these updates if the available information didn’t keep me focused.

    Going forward, I will inevitably be cutting back — probably to a biweekly, eventually monthly schedule, while stories / research are still trickling out. I’m proud that we’ve *all* been watchful for so long, even if we haven’t succeeded entirely in the hopeless task of avoiding every infection.

  38. 38.

    EarthWindFire

    @Anne Laurie: I don’t think we would have navigated this pandemic as well as we did without your early and continued help. However you decide to stick with it, I’ll always be grateful.

  39. 39.

    Thor Heyerdahl

    Thank you Anne for the incredible amount of work you have done with this over the last four years! During those days of uncertainty, you were there like a lighthouse in the storm with information to guide and comfort with me reading your posts nearly every day. To the commenters around the world, it was so helpful to see your local realities.

  40. 40.

    Ohio Mom

    @EarthWindFire: Well, a person can’t help feeling what they are feeling, even as they know their feeling is irrational, which is where I am now.

    I am thinking that there is a lot of societal support for memory-holing the entire experience. I don’t see any masks anywhere anymore, not even at the doctor’s office. No one includes Covid in their conversation. Even this week, when a small talk topic could be “Where were you four years ago?”

    CVS sent me a text the other day telling me I am eligible for another booster but they are always shilling for business. Otherwise, as I said, other than Anne Laurie’s posts, radio silence.

  42. 42.

    Lapassionara

    Thanks, AL, for this heroic work you have been doing. Since we are at the four year mark, I wish someone would aggregate clips of Trump’s idiotic claims. I recall for a while that his approval level went up. But he decided to be the face of the government’s response and appeared on TV every afternoon for a while, culminating in the suggestions for such “remedies” as horse dewormer and bleach. So his approval started to drop, and some enterprising young woman became a hit doing impressions with his voice. When people say “are you better off today than you were four years ago,” we can show those clips. Truly a nightmare time.

  43. 43.

    Suzanne

    @Ohio Mom:

    And still, listening to myself tell the story, it felt preposterous to me that we were in such a panic. Almost embarrassing to admit. 

    I know the feeling.
    But I remind myself about crabs in a bucket. There’s a lot of people who wanted to pull us down, health-wise, to their level.

  44. 44.

    Betty

    @eclare: It attacks the epithelial cells which cover every part and system of the body. There is no limit to the potential damage.

  47. 47.

    evodevo

    @Ohio Mom:   You did the right thing..all the evidence developed since then says so.  This was almost a year before vaccines were available, and it became known that you could carry the virus and shed it for days before coming down with it.  You all are probably alive because of precautions.  Don’t second guess.  Down here in MAGA land (central KY) the illness and death toll was highest among deniers.

  48. 48.

    raven

    I was going to see Dylan tomorrow night but I decided to bail. I’m not masking at a rock and roll show!

  50. 50.

    Glidwrith

    Your work, Anne Laurie, helped save a bunch of school children and adults here in San Diego. It let me warn my husband who had the ear of people that could do something about getting the schools shut. It let me force my company go to at-home work. You saved lives which is one.of the greatest accomplishments anyone can do.

  51. 51.

    RevRick

    My wife and I traveled from Allentown to Maine in early March to help my sister-in-law and her husband care for my mother-in-law, who was in hospice care. The trip up was eerie as there barely any traffic. It was even eerier on the return in April after my mother-in-law’s death (and it would be two years before we could have a memorial service for her in church).

    I remember my wife sewing cloth masks out of old pillow cases, and going grocery shopping at the local Hannaford shortly after arriving in Maine, and how creepy an experience that was. We all looked at each other like potential serial killers, shelves were empty, and we grabbed what we could. I pitied the cashiers and shelf stockers.

  52. 52.

    Suzanne

    To echo…. COVID is absolutely a huge trauma, and it is compounded by the gaslighting.

    On my FB page, back when the pandemic was in full force, I wrote something about that. How people who were actively masking, distancing, handwashing, etc, were being made to feel absolutely crazy. When they should have felt like they were engaged in the greatest collective act of citizenship in a hundred years.

  53. 53.

    Old School

    @raven:

    I was going to see Dylan tomorrow night but I decided to bail. I’m not masking at a rock and roll show!

    That’s too bad.  I haven’t masked at shows for a while, but I certainly did when the world started opening back up in 2021.

  54. 54.

    TBone

    After suffering for two long years starting in Jan. 2020, I got really sick again in December despite being fully boosted with all shots.  Diagnosed with strep but despite taking ABX never recovered.  Every day in late afternoon, weird symptoms worsen (complete with burning, asthmatic type lungs and fevers that come and go) and flare till bedtime.  Night sweats and shortness of breath plague my sleep as do anxiety/panic attacks that I’ve never had before but ONLY at night.

    On a lighter note, research is finally catching up to find out why women are more susceptible.  Happy Womens’ History Month!

    https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/02/28/1087617/tackling-long-haul-diseases/

  56. 56.

    Tenar Arha

    @Suzanne:

    How people who were actively masking, distancing, handwashing, etc, were being made to feel absolutely crazy. When they should have felt like they were engaged in the greatest collective act of citizenship in a hundred years.

    QFT

  57. 57.

    frosty

    I appreciate anything you can come up with, even though the aggregation gets a bit thin. My focus is on Long COVID so if you can keep finding those articles I’d appreciate it. I find anything from research, even on infections etc., to be more useful than the US and worldwide stories.

    Thanks for doing this for four years! When you started I’d read them when I woke up then want to pull the covers over my head and hide. It’s a little better now. :-)

  58. 58.

    MazeDancer

    Yay, Anne Laurie!

    You help bring sanity to a crazy world.

    Sometimes, I can’t tell if GOP has a death wish, like killing people, or both. But threat of death does not scare them. It is not just denial. It feels like more.

    Read today how people reacting to the NPR lady’s “I want to dine out but my immuno-compromised husband doesn’t want to die” article said: But COVID isn’t bad for the vast majority of people.

    Maybe. For now.

    Just hope nasal preventative sprays bring safety soon,

  59. 59.

    jonas

    I know this has been done in other contexts, but it would be interesting to have someone in a particularly high Covid mortality state like Tennessee or Arkansas study local obituaries and see if any of them cop to why grandma or Uncle Pete really died and compare that to what the public health records are saying. I’m sure there’s a discrepancy that people in these communities aren’t even aware of,  either because they’re MAGA and grandma died of a regular old flu or heart attack and that’s that, dammit, or they don’t want friends and other family jumping all over them by admitting Covid is serious enough to kill sometimes.

  62. 62.

    RevRick

    @MazeDancer: As Umberto Eco pointed out, in his 1995 essay on Ur-Fascism, fascism generally celebrates a Cult of the Hero, which actually means it’s a death cult.
    Trump refused to wear a mask in public, because he wanted to show what a tough guy he was, and his followers took their cue from him. The result was that while the Northeast, from Massachusetts to DC, got really slammed by the initial COVID outbreak, after Trump cut off travel from Europe (and jammed the airports), MAGA states have since had far higher death rates.

  63. 63.

    Bill Arnold

    @evodevo:

    You did the right thing..all the evidence developed since then says so.

    Yes. Even early in the pandemic, the science was disturbing.
    For the first few months of the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic/pandemic, I was reading all the scientific literature (unemployed all of 2020, but the volume of science became too  much for humans), and it was very clear that this was a nasty novel virus. It infected cells differently from anything infecting humans but SARS-1, and as a consequence could obviously infect parts of nearly every organ system (epithelial cells), and there were disturbing hints in the science by Feb 2020 that the post-acute COVID-19 sequelae, including cognition-related issues, were going to be a long-term problems for the population.
    Infection-control/public health precautions were absolutely in order, and still are. What was done was often stupid, like surface washing, closing parks, etc, but some of the measures were very helpful, particularly for most of 2020 when the virus had a relatively low R0 (roughly 3). And even now, disciplined use of N-95 levels of protection (or better) reduces the chance of infection (by any respiratory virus, or bacterium even) to a low level, and to essentially zero if everyone cooperates.
    Also, in 2020, it absolutely made sense to try to hold out (stave off infection) for a vaccine; it was clear that there would be a vaccine in wide distribution by early (Jan/Feb/Mar/Apr) 2021. (At least it was clear to me; multiple Manhattan-project style vaccine development efforts were in play, and new vaccine tech, too.)

  64. 64.

    StringOnAStick

    @Anne Laurie: Your updates were beyond incredibly valuable to my husband and I, thanks to you I knew what was coming.  I quit my job (dental hygienist, though my major education is as a hydrogeologist) and that turned into retirement (yay!).  My former colleagues each had it twice or more before the end of 2020, so I know I made the right choice, and it’s only because of the incredible source of information that you provided that let me quit feeling guilt free.  My deepest thanks!

  65. 65.

    Ohio Mom

    @Percysowner: Oh, I read several articles about Paul Alexandra over the years. He really persevered and made a productive life for himself. I hope he had a peaceful transtion.

  67. 67.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Baud: ​
     

    People always get sicker over the holidays.

    Tru dat. I was comparing this year’s winter peak to last year’s. (And waving my hand at last winter v. two winters ago.)

  68. 68.

    wenchacha

    @Ohio Mom:  Interesting about the email from CVS. I have been wondering about my next booster. I got the Novavax last fall at Costco.

    I’m curious if I can just go ahead and schedule it. And will Medicare cover it again?

    Thinking out loud.

  69. 69.

    VFX Lurker

    @wenchacha: For what it’s worth, my parents got a second dose of the 2023-2024 vaccine at a Meijer pharmacy in Michigan last week. No scheduling issues.

    They’re both on Medicare Advantage. I didn’t hear anything about it not being covered. Vaccines are supposed to be covered at no cost by American insurers, anyway.

  70. 70.

    Chetan Murthy

    @EarthWindFire: @evodevo: @Ohio Mom: I’m with evodevo: you did the right thing, and in the presence of insufficient and sometimes incorrect information.  You worked to keep your family safe, at some cost to yourselves, and in doing so you worked to keep everybody else safe too.  I spent over a year basically indoors.  So did my mom and my sister and her BF.  I used to (curbside) pickup groceries from the Safeway and schlep ’em over to their house: we’d do a little dance on the sidewalk where I’d put stuff on a wooden crate and back away, so my sister’s BF could pick ’em up and transfer ’em into their garage.  In retrospect, maybe too great an abundance of caution.  But we had no real idea what to expect and what was safe: it was only much later that we learned that the risk of infection outdoors was negligible (remember all the ruckus about COVID particles in the wake of runners?)

    There were two reactions one could have to the lack of good information: being more careful than seemed warranted, or throwing caution to the wind.  You and others (including me) took the first course, and I don’t think we need to feel ashamed for that.

  71. 71.

    pieceofpeace

    @Anne Laurie:  Thank you for keeping the information current, only less often.  I found them invaluable during the worst of Covid times, and welcome a less-frequent report.

    I look forward to the day when you’ll hang up this hat due to its irrelevance.

  73. 73.

    ColoradoGuy

    Thank you so much, Anne, for your hard work over the years. You might not know it, but I have no doubt you saved several people from a horrible death.

    My experience getting whacked by it was last June of 2023, when I foolishly did not wear a mask in the Denver and Seattle airports. Fortunately, I tested at home, got a Paxlovid prescription, and it was completely gone in 36 hours. More recently, I got something like a very persistent cold, lasting 2.5 weeks, but never tested positive. So it might have been Covid, or not, no way of knowing. The current variant can apparently evade the test and mimic a cold pretty successfully.

    No question there was a worldwide PTSD experience. Our little family isolated ourselves for three long years … remote grocery deliveries, no restaurants or visits to bookstores, making a ritual of driving the cars every four weeks, etc. One of my neighbors *still* has a no-visit-to-their-house policy, four years later.

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